One problem faced in managing all or part of a large, complex project is determining, at an arbitrary time, the present status of each relevant activity associated with the project and the history of each of these activities. Project activities can be divided into classes, such as decisions, configurations and feedback/communication aspects. For complex projects, it would be helpful if each activity in a class could have an intuitive or self-evident icon or symbol that is clearly associated with that activity.
What is needed is a visually-based system that indicates, preferably using a single intuitive symbol, icon or other indicium, present status of a decision or activity or configuration (“objects”), recent relevant change(s) in the activity statement or the status of, or constraints imposed on, the decision or activity. Preferably, the flexible indicia can be modified to reflect the most important aspects of the activity. Preferably, each (similar) activity should have a distinguishable indicium that is easily recognized by a system user.